What is Gazebo? Inspired while visiting a two hundred year old farmhouse in Appletreewick, England, Janet Lederman created in 1977 the Gazebo School Park at the Esalen Institute. The school is situated on one acre in Big Sur, California and offers a year- round program for children ages 1-6, and also other support services such as: Student teacher internship, Continuing Education for teachers, weekend and week-long programs for seminarians, health care, etc. The Gazebo School Park "is designed with the educational goal of maximizing the full use of the child's growing body, unfolding intelligence, and soaring imagination. By maximizing each child's unique learning style and pace and using the environment with its demands and differences as major tools, the child learns in his/her earliest years: self confidence, self-esteem, and self- discipline in the most basic form." (The Play's The Thing, Janet Lederman 1991). What do we do? The Gazebo is an environmentally-centered philosophy that includes developmentally appropriate practices and attempts to base the development of it's philosophy on care and concern for the whole child and the well-being of the environment. Environmental Ethics are at the core of the curriculum. Learning about the self and others are primary skills learnt in an environment filled with opportunities to become bonded with nature. We have reintroduced time for exploring, investigating, testing, sorting, evaluating, assimilating, learning, what the world is all about, its ups and downs expanding awareness and relatedness. There are daily jobs to be done: cleaning the corral, grooming and feeding the animals, tending to the greenhouse and the gardens, and ordering indoor structures. The emerging curriculum is always honored. For the most part, children are free to choose and change activities as they wish. Who are we? The members of the staff work as a family. Each individual brings a special expertise, talent, and uniqueness maintaining the equilibrium of the emotional and psychological ambiance providing a model for one of the basic postulates of Gestalt and Gazebo: The appreciation of differences. By creating a family system, the members relate freely with one another, getting together and apart, agreeing and differing, living and loving in a shared farmhouse. Our teachers are respectful, sensitive, and caring. Some skills like a sense of humor, and joy as well as patience, are needed to be a Gazebo teacher. They are present to insure success and a feeling of accomplishment which are very important for a child during early stages of development. They are able to perceive the whole child and how his or her parts come together generating an integrated being. You can help! Gazebo School Park is looking for the right teacher with experience who desires an alternative and creative learning environment in a setting of extraordinary natural beauty. Grandmotherly persons of color are especially invited to apply, and lodging is provided. Here are some related links: -Educom -The Gazebo page on Esalen's Website -The Yahoo index of Alternative Education sites -The Alternative Higher Education Network -The Sustainability Consciousness Homepage
